What is winning?

[Southside]

What is winning? Is it simple remaking a country into a Western democracy(Democracy doesnt work with Islamic countries).I hear many people say, we "won" Iraq, or we are "winning" in Afghanistan, but are we? People make it seem like Iraq is now some desert paradise now that Saddam is out, and the fact is, its nowhere near that. Taliban has been out since 2001 and Afghanistan is still going through hell.Is it toppling a regime and then have the country go to crap? Look at Libya, Ghaddafi has been gone for over a year now and we had the embassy incident, and its still skirmishes going on between rival milita groups. So the mods wont lock this, I dont mind if comparisons are made to Vietnam, WW2, or any other conflict.

[MrMundane]

I guess they mean we won by the fact that we didn't get pushed out of the countries. Otherwise, i have no idea.

[xmojox]

I think we "won" in Iraq because they got Saddam, and we're winning in Afghanistan for some equally arcane reason. In a war that was begun because of falsified intelligence (weapons of mass destruction), I wonder if anyone really can win.

[ImCoolBeans]

I wonder if anyone really can win.

That's something I've also asked myself before. I wonder if there can really be a winner in that situation to begin with. My thought is most likely not. At this point it seems like both sides continue to lose and suffer from the war -- what more is there to be gained?

[xmojox]

That's something I've also asked myself before. I wonder if there can really be a winner in that situation to begin with. My thought is most likely not. At this point it seems like both sides continue to lose and suffer from the war -- what more is there to be gained?

Nothing that I can see. It's not as if the people there really want us to be there. It's past time to say "Oops" and bring our troops home and stop wasting money that we don't have to begin with.

[Harry Smith]

Depends on the mandate of the mission, for example I would say that our first aim in Iraq which was to uphold the UN powers and remove the WMD's was kinda achieved, I mean we never found WMD's but we managed to get rid of a rogue state and remove a murderous Dictator. The Iraqi's have democracy and we have pulled out our troops. I say that Iraq was a victory for NATO just took slightly longer.

Afghanistan for me has shades of Vietnam, the only people who want us there are the Elite of the Country who don't bother leaving Kabul, 90% of the peasant and nomadic population are sympathetic to the Taliban or simply scared of them. We've been there for the last 10 years, we spending so much money just training there own police forces only for there own militia's and police to shoot at NATO troops when we train them.

[Cygnus]

In an armed conflict or full-scale war no one wins, there are deaths on both sides, and even though it is good for population control they were still humans who wanted to live.